


Legacy

by NightsMistress



Category: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, action-adventure, generational guilt, timeperiod: Squire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7261777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alanna and Neal investigate rumors of bandits. Along the way, Alanna is confronted with the consequences of the decision Jonathan made at the commencement of his reign and has to square the need to punish the families of conspirators from a coup twenty years old against her sense of honor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChronicBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/gifts).



> My thanks to my betas, who did not run away screaming at the sight of a 6k story focusing on our favorite redheaded knight and her squire who does not know when to stop talking.

It was not every day that Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau accidentally uncovered a bandit attack, but such was not for lack of trying. Most of the time, she sought them out, ignoring the protests of her squire, Nealan of Queenscove, that bandits were really best left to the Riders but she was of the view that as the realm’s champion she had a responsibility to uproot injustice where she found it. Sometimes, it simply took more searching.

Uncovering a bandit attack on the outskirts of Fief Tirragen was unexpected, but something Alanna was prepared to deal with. She had heard rumours that there had been an increase of bandit activity of late — which the realm did not need at the moment with war against Scanra looming on the horizon and a two year royal progress to pass through the kingdom. As such, when she heard the rumors, Alanna immediately went looking for their source.

She hadn’t expected them so close to to a military outpost manned by Tirragen soldiers, a short ride from its gates.

“Oh, look,” Neal commented in tones of utmost weariness. “You’ve finally found your bandits, Sir. I thought we were going to ride all over Tortall.”

“I miss the days when you were scared of me,” Alanna said, feigning exasperation. In truth, he’d been no less talkative when he was awed by her reputation. She did not recall with fondness the months of genuine sharpness before they settled into more comfortable verbal sparring.

“They haven’t stopped,” Neal assured her, his voice a dry drawl. “This is the culmination of _months_ of terror, I promise. I’m simply too scared to be scared anymore.”

“This is why your father warned me that tying your tongue in a knot would achieve nothing.” Alanna squinted, trying to count the number of combatants. From what she could see, the bandits themselves were a ragtag bunch of twenty to thirty men, half on horses and altogether far too organized to have recently turned to a life of crime. This would never have happened in Pirate’s Swoop, she thought disparagingly.It was a level of organization that they wouldn’t have in Pirate’s Swoop. People only turned to banditry when they needed more than they had.

The bandits were being routed, if not handily, by the soldiers loyal to the Tirragen family. They had taken up a defensive formation around the gate, with a curious gap behind their wall of soldiers. Alanna studied the formation, and saw that one set of soldiers was struggling. The bandits, sensing a weakness, were starting to concentrate their forces there.

“Right,” Alanna said, nodding to the gap in the guard. “In there, Queenscove.”

She spurred her horse forward, shield up and sword ready. It seemed like it would be a fairly run-of-the-mill rout, and Alanna could focus on reducing casualties where possible. After all, it would likely be her or Neal healing them afterward, and healers were notoriously prone to overreaching themselves in the face of other people’s pain.

Then the atmosphere changed.

“The witch! Kill the witch!” one of the bandits screamed. Alanna whipped her head around, searching. She had heard this . She had heard these sentiments before; most people in Tortall knew that Alanna of Pirate Swoop and Olau had the Gift. She had thought that any residual anti-Gift sentiments had been stamped out by the Immortal War. But his attention was behind her, and she turned around to look.

Flanked by a handful of cavalry soldiers, someone wearing Tirragen purple and black was riding straight into the thick of the fight. Though the youth’s hair was cut short, to the ears, and the youth were dressed in men’s clothing, Alanna was instinctively certain sure that it was not one of the male members of that family. It made sense that she would dress as a boy to take to the field; the Tirragens were very conservative in Alanna’s experience and thought women had no place on a battlefield at all. Some of that likely had to do with her killing Alex. Some of it though was just plain meanness and refusal to change.

The girl adjusted her weight in the saddle, let her reins drop, and raised her hands to shoulder height, fingers outstretched. They were glowing an incandescent blue, threaded with black, and as she concentrated the light expanded, surrounding first her hands, then herself, and then her men. It was not until the flickering flames of her Gift reached out to lick at the mount of a nearby bandit that Alanna understood that it was not a mere protection spell. The bandit screamed in terror. The men around him joined him.

On its own, the girl’s spell was brutal, but efficient. That wasn’t the problem. The spell was growing too large too quickly, covering all twenty bandits in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t sustainable for most Gifted persons and Alanna would have known if there was any mage in this area with sufficient talent and training. The hairs on Alanna’s arm rose up at the oppressive feel of the girl’s Gift, and Alanna’s breath caught in her throat. She knew what this sensation meant.

She’d never seen someone completely lose control of their Gift before. She’d once fought a shaman who channeled his life force to fight her — and died because of it — but that was not the same thing. She’d read stories of the devastating effects that an out of control mage could level on the people and land caught up in it. Death of the wielder was inevitable. Death of everyone in the immediate vicinity was likely. There were stories of a patch of land where nothing grew, the land itself baked to a glassy sheen from the sheer force of the magical explosion. Once the Gift completely slipped out of its owner’s control, there was little that could be done.

A sensible person would ride away and try to put as much distance between themselves and the impending disaster as possible.

Alanna had never been a sensible person.

She nudged her horse forward, her own fingers glittering with amethyst light as she cast a shield around herself and her horse. Beside her, Neal was doing the same.

“It’s not too late to turn back!” she shouted. “You’re not obligated to follow me!”

“Your insanity’s catching, Sir!” Neal threw back. “Besides, if you die here, the only way the King won’t have my head is if I die too!”

“Of course!” Alanna replied. She really had expected no less from her squire. He’d impressed her before with his loyalty, peppered with complaints as it was, and this was no different. He could pretend that it was pure self interest that drove him forward, but the fear of an out of control Gift was a primal one, and they both knew it.

She spurred her horse forward into the dark flames.

Inside was a nightmare of screams and shouts, of frantic efforts of the bandits to get out, or reach the center and the girl responsible for it all. Alanna was shielded from the spell’s worst effects by her own Gift, but she could still see flashes of terrible images in the flames: her family dead; her kingdom burning; herself helpless to stop it. She bit her tongue and with the dull pain, remembered that this was just an illusion. A very good one, one that showed what she feared, but an illusion nonetheless. It would have been worse if her shields were down, she suspected, and she kept them up with grim determination.

“Where is she?” she heard Neal ask frantically. It was a good question. She rode forward, physical shield up against wild sword swings and arrows, and headed towards where she had last seen the girl.

Alanna’s breath caught when she found her. There was a bubble of dark blue light surrounding her and her horse and, by the light of her Gift, Alanna could see the awful rigidity of someone caught in a seizure. Her dark eyes were wide and unseeing, her face pale and horrified. Blood trickled from her nose over her lips and chin, and Alanna could see drying blood trailing from her ears as well. Her teeth were bared in a rictus.

Alanna plunged forward, desperate to reach her. Numair had told her once that the only way to stop an untrained person once they had gone this far was to break their concentration, cause them to stop using their Gift, and then stabilize them with your own. She hadn’t thought she’d ever have to do that. They were in _Tortall_. There were facilities in place to teach people how to use their Gift safely. How this girl had gone so long without being found was almost impossible to fathom.

She slapped the girl hard. A second time. A third. She was successful on the fourth try. The blue-black light guttered and died as the girl blinked at Alanna, dazed. She sighed, slumping forward. Alanna steadied her with one hand, juggling her shield at the same time and trusting in her Gift to protect her for the moments she needed to steady the girl. The girl was a head taller than Alanna at least, and Alanna had to use both arms to keep her there. She risked having the girl fall and break her neck otherwise.

She heard the bolt hitting her chainmail before she felt the impact. For a moment she felt nothing. Then the pain hit her, shocking in its intensity.

Alanna could force the arrow out of her shoulder and heal herself — but the girl would die.

It wasn’t really a choice at all. She poured her Gift into the girl, and keeping her heart beating and her lungs expanding and contracting. Around her, the battle died out, a quick rout of the bandits, their will to fight broken by the girl’s spell. Neal was holding the reins of her horse, yelling to anyone that would listen that she needed to leave the battlefield now, yelling at her to stop what she was doing, to hold on and stay conscious until they got to safety.

She held on. She held on until they arrived at an outpost and then she let go. Her last thought was a distant rueful appreciation that she had finished teaching Neal how to heal arrow wounds the other day.

* * *

 

Alanna opened her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling, with visible trusses and gables buttressing the walls. She blinked up in sleepy bewilderment, reaching up with a hand to rub at an eye and brush stray hair from her face. Caught up in the dreamy lassitude that followed magical healing, Alanna couldn’t quite remember how she had come to be here.

Then she remembered the battle, the flames. At the epicenter of it all a young woman with dark hair shorn at the neck, her hands alight as she conjured nightmares. She supposed someone had taken her into one of the guest rooms in the outpost after she fainted. Probably Neal; for all that he protested and carried on, she doubted that he would have let one of the Tirragen men take her anywhere.

She took a moment to look inside herself, for the violet flame that always burned within her. It was more depleted than she had hoped; she’d be able to assist with healing the more serious injuries after the battle, but sutures, bandages, and the soldiers’ natural healing would have to do the rest.

Alanna sat up, grunting at the wave of dizziness. She’d been lying down a while, she supposed, and healing always wore her out. It didn’t help that she wasn’t getting any younger. Youth was wasted on the young, and on younger Alanna more so than most. She rotated her left shoulder and was pleased to find it moved easily, without any residual pain or stiffness.

That done, she looked around and took in her surroundings.

The room was devoid of furniture other than the uncomfortable bed Alanna found herself on on, which didn’t surprise her. One of the purposes of the royal progress was to ensure that the houses involved in Duke Roger’s coup were kept under the heel of destitution. At the time when Jon had proposed it in lieu of executions, Alanna had thought it merciful. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, she wondered if it was just something Jon had to do in order to appease another political faction.

Thinking about these kinds of things made her head hurt.

She spied her boots lying on the floor near her feet and pulled them on. Alanna went to find her squire.

* * *

 

The outpost’s dining hall had been turned into a makeshift infirmary while Alanna had been sleeping. Wounded soldiers lay on makeshift stretchers, resting easily. Most sported bandages, dried old blood staining the fabric with rusty blossoms. Moving his way around the room was Neal, an emerald fire wreathing his hands. Judging from the residual glow and the number of bandages, he was apparently prioritizing his Gift for the most serious injuries, which she approved of. It had taken her a while to drill that into him. As she watched, he let his Gift pool into a nasty sword wound on a man’s back, the long, deep cut sealing closed as she watched.

That done, he pushed himself to his feet with a sigh and turned around. He stared at her blankly before recognition dawned. He looked exhausted, green eyes hectic in a pale face framed by sweaty hair, but he still had enough spark to take two quick steps forward to her.

“What are you doing up?” he asked, his voice sharp with accusation. He raked his hair back from his face, then folded his arms.

Alanna had to look up at him, but by now ,she was used to that. “I’ve come to work.”

“After all the work I did putting you back together?” Neal asked incredulously. “You must be joking. My father warned me about this. What will I tell him — or the King! — when you keel over dead?”

“Queenscove,” Alanna cut in. If she let Neal get a head of steam, he could rant almost indefinitely. “I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Yes, I know,” he retorted, clearly exasperated. “That’s why I have _so many_ examples to draw on!”

“And what you tell them is that you tried to tell me not to, and I ignored it.”

Neal opened his mouth, closed it, put up one hand, and then let it fall. He sighed. “As long as you’re not going to kill yourself doing this. I’d never find another knight master at this point.”

“I haven’t died so far,” Alanna said.

“You gave it your best yesterday,” Neal grumbled. “But who am I to stand in the way of mad knights and their death wishes?”

Alanna raised her eyebrows. “Are you done?”

“No,” Neal said, “but I accept that this is not the time.”

“What’s left to do?” she asked briskly. “Good work on triage, by the way.”

“Broken bones, mostly,” Neal said. “I’m pretty sure there’re three people with cracked ribs and I _know_ one soldier has a broken arm.”

“I haven’t taught you how to deal with broken bones?”

“Not yet. You keep talking about it, but then no one has the good grace to break their arm on command for you.”

“Well, then,” Alanna said cheerfully, “you’re about to learn how to heal broken bones. Let’s start with the cracked ribs. They’re the most common injury from jousting.”

“Another reason why no one should do it,” Neal replied as he brought her around to one resting soldier. His bare chest was wrapped tightly with bandages, but he breathed easily, his face unclouded by pain, while he slept. Neal must have taken away the pain while strapping the soldier’s ribs. Alanna looked at him with the light of her Gift, and could see the injury that Neal had spoken about: three cracked ribs on the right side, about halfway down his ribcage. The lung underneath was intact, though with the slight congestion of the early symptoms of a cold. She looked up at Neal.

“Ready?”

“What do I need to do?” Neal was never glib when it came to healing.

“Have you ever seen a lattice in a garden?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine that the bone is like that lattice, and you’re repairing it.”

Neal blinked. “That’s it? I thought it’d be more difficult.”

“It will be,” Alanna said. “You have to keep the bone aligned while you heal it. A badly healed break will mean this soldier can’t fight again. The bone will want to heal, but you have to consciously force it into place while it does that.”

Neal nodded, and let green light encircle the injured man’s chest, the gift twisting and writhing under his gaze. Alanna waited, reminding herself that she didn’t need to step in and do it for him. Mending broken bones was difficult, but he’d never get better at doing it if he didn’t do it himself. Finally, he let the light fade and looked at her , blinking dazedly. “It’s done.”

The three hairline cracks that she had seen earlier were gone completely, the fractures knitted together as if several weeks healed. She probed one of the ribs delicately. It held up.

“Well done,” she said. “Let’s do that broken arm next.”

She walked him through mending the broken arm, and then moved on to the other two men with broken ribs, pleased at how he held up after working in the infirmary for most of the day. He had worn himself out more than she would have liked, however, in healing less serious cuts and bruises. It was a hazard of those who healed with their Gift, that they would give and give until their bodies gave out. Alanna knew this as well as anyone, even as she pretended to ignore that basic truth.

“Neal, go to bed,” she said, once he was done. “You’ve done everything you can here.”

He nodded, exhaustion stilling his tongue in a way that little else could. She watched as he walked away, shoulders slumping in fatigue. Once he had turned the corner into the corridor, she did a pass through of the infirmary, checking on bandages and stitches. These all seemed in order.

Her next step would be to find out what was going on, and for that, she’d have to question the person who had upended the battle. Alanna was willing to bet any money she liked that she was a relative of Alex’s. A niece. A cousin. Possibly even a daughter, though Alanna thought she might have heard of a bastard daughter before now. She struggled to remember the genealogy of the Tirragens while she stalked the corridors. It was difficult, because Alanna had never really had an interest in the subject. Unlike history and tactics, which were at least useful, family trees didn’t interest her that much. Myles would know, but it would be wasteful to seek him out when she could simply ask the woman in question who she was.

Assuming she could find her, that was. She doubted that the woman would make it easy for her.

* * *

 

Alanna finally found the woman she was searching for in a repurposed commander’s office overlooking the keep. She had traded her breeches and shirt for a dress, her practical shoes for slippers, and her air of calm confidence for exhaustion and strain. There were lines of pain carved into her face, and her hands clung to the table in a white-knuckled grip.

“Sir Alanna,” she said flatly. “I see you’re well.”

“I see you’re not,” Alanna replied. “Have you seen Neal yet?”

“Is that your squire who has taken over my hall? I don’t need to,” the woman said. “I’m not injured.”

“What’s your name?” Alanna asked. “I feel I should know you, but I’ve been out of Corus too long.”

“Ethelle of Tirragen,” she replied, an air of challenge in the way she lifted her chin. Alanna supposed that was to be expected. She revised her estimate of Ethelle’s age to her late teens: young enough to have been born after Jon took the throne, but old enough to feel the sting of her reduced prospects keenly.

“Ethelle, you must know you have the Gift,” Alanna went on.

“Yes, I know,” Ethelle said. “I know the rumors about the Goddess’ hand on my shoulder, but that’s to scare the bandits.”

“Trust me, you do that all on your own without the Goddess’s help,” Alanna said dryly, remembering the horrors that Ethelle had conjured. “Why are you untrained?”

Ethelle shrugged, seemingly indifferent. Alanna could see the frustrated helplessness in the tension of her jaw and the angle of her hands as she shrugged. “Where would I get training from? No one will apprentice me — and I _have_ searched. I can’t go to the Royal University without passing the exams. I don’t wish to take religious vows.”

“That’s all true,” Alanna agreed. “But you could have petitioned the king for assistance.”

Ethelle stared at her incredulously. “I know how the king thinks of us,” she said, voice superficially calm. There were years of repressed pain and anger underneath that calm exterior, like a strong current under thin ice. “Why would he do me any favors?” She turned to face the window. “Besides, there are bandits. I can deal with them with what I know.”

“No, you can’t. You nearly died yesterday. Worse, you nearly killed everyone around you, including the soldiers sworn to protect you. You obviously have some control over your Gift, otherwise you would have driven everyone around you insane with your visions. Thank the Goddess for small mercies! But yesterday was too close and it was only the beginning. You could do much more damage than that to yourself or people around you.” At best, Ethelle could have driven her own soldiers permanently insane. At worst … Alanna didn’t care think about what that would look like.

“I know,” Ethelle demanded. “But what would you have me do? My soldiers know what to do if I do start to lose control.”

Alanna remembered the way that the Tirragen soldiers had rallied to Ethelle’s defense when her Gift was a raging maestro around her. “You mean die for you.”

Ethelle sucked in a furious breath.

“But I can see that you’re trapped,” Alanna went on, cutting Ethelle off before she could start to argue. “It sounds like you’ve done everything you could.”

The color was still high in Ethelle’s cheeks, but she held her tongue.

“I can’t stay here to teach you, but I can ask Jon to send someone for you. But what do _you_ want?”

Ethelle stared at Alanna like she was mad. It was a look that Alanna was used to. “What a strange question.”

“Yes, it’s widely held that insanity runs in my family,” Alanna agreed. “Still, what do you want?”

“What do I want?” Ethelle echoed. “I want _options_.” She slanted a look at Alanna. “But you can’t give me those.”

“Leave it to me.”

Ethelle stared at her before shaking her head in patent disbelief. “You _are_ insane,” she said sharply. “What do you propose to do? Demand that King Jonathan personally come and tutor me in the Gift?”

“If I need to,” Alanna said. “But I thought I might ask, first.”

“The King has made his opinion of my family very well known.” Ethelle’s voice was scathing, and Alanna could understand that. Raoul had told her that Lerant of Eldorne had been wary and skittish when he’d had first met him, a talented warrior with no prospect of ever realizing that potential. Ethelle was in an even worse position; an untrained mage had to be taught for the safety of its wielder and those around her, but she’d never found anyone willing to take her on. It was little wonder that she was wary of someone coming in and fixing her problems with a wave of a hand.

“Jon’s not unreasonable,” Alanna said. “It wouldn’t be the first time that he’s intervened like this. As to why … it’s just.” Jonathan had become more complicated with age, the responsibilities of the crown requiring him to sacrifice principles for practicalities, forcing him to compromise to appease many different factions. That said, she thought the answer here was obvious. Ethelle needed to be taught.

“Do what you will,” Ethelle said, equal parts ungracious and wary. “I think you won’t succeed.”

“I usually do,” Alanna replied in answer to both comments. “Now, I have some things to attend to.” Like making sure Neal had gone to bed as he said he would. Find her mirror in her saddlebags, so that she could speak to Jonathan. One last check on the soldiers in the makeshift infirmary. She was weary at the thought of all that needed to be attended to. She hoped that the bandits had been scared off for the time being, buying her time to do all that she must.

Ethelle nodded. “Go then.”

Alanna left.

* * *

 

The next evening found Alanna sitting in her room, gazing into a small handheld mirror. Though the moonlight from the window was not enough to illuminate the room, Alanna didn’t need it. Her Gift was light enough as she scryed Corus seeking the chamber of King Jonathan of Conté, her childhood friend.

The mirror finally showed a handsome man with dark hair, a neat beard, and eyes the same brilliant sapphire as his own Gift, looking into his own mirror. Alanna noted, with some mild annoyance, that his mirror didn’t have painted flowers on its frame. She made a note to suggest to his children to remedy that.

“Alanna,” Jon said. “I was just about to look for you.”

“I need your help,” Alanna said in way of greeting.

Jon’s eyebrows raised. “You? Asking for help? This can’t be Alanna.”

Alanna rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Jon. You know I can ask for help when I need it now.”

“I suppose old age has caught up even with you. What have you found for me, my Lioness? Shall I send _all_ the Riders or just Raoul’s squad?”

“All the Riders might be excessive,” Alanna said. “I need a Gifted tutor.”

“All right,” Jon said, patiently. Alanna could tell from the way he held his mouth that he was trying to hold back a number of questions. Well, he would have answers to those questions in very short course. “Who for?”

“Ethelle of Tirragen.”

Jon blinked. It was the most surprise that Alanna had seen in Jon’s face in years. It was good for him, she thought, to occasionally be caught off-guard. If he spent too much time being at least one step ahead of everyone else, he became complacent. Shaking him out of that rut could only be to his benefit.

“I definitely won’t be sending Raoul’s squad then,” he said, regaining his composure. “That would be unwise.”

Alanna could understand that. She didn’t think that anyone would accept members of the Tirragen and Eldorne families in close proximity to each other. She doubted that they would foment a rebellion between them, but apparently appearances things mattered.

Also, and she was relieved that Jon didn’t say it, but appearances meant that Keladry of Mindelan could not spend too much time with the first female knight in Tortall in over a century. She understood why Jon had to decide as he did, but her anger at the decision still smouldered.

“Pity,” Alanna said, trying to keep her voice light. “I’d like to see how Keladry’s doing.”

“She’s doing well.” Jon’s expression was sympathetic. “Raoul says that she’s impressing everyone she meets.”

Alanna grinned. “Naturally. She’ll be a great knight.”

“Back to Ethelle,” Jon said. “Why does she need a tutor in the Gift? Tell me what happened.”

Alanna quickly relayed the story of how Ethelle had come to take the field, and how she’d subsequently lost control.

“She knows enough to be dangerous to herself,” Alanna concluded. “She’s got some instinctual understanding of her magic, as she’s not dead yet. But if she keeps this up, she will be, and so will everyone around her.”

Jon was silent a long moment, frowning in thought. “Hmm.”

“What are you thinking?”

“She doesn’t need a tutor _in_ the Gift, she needs a tutor who _has_ the Gift, who is also familiar with the entrance exams,” Jon said decisively. “I want her at the university as quickly as possible.”

Alanna raised her eyebrows skeptically. “So you can keep an eye on her?”

“Yes,” Jon said. “War with Scanra is inevitable, and I want to know where Tortall’s assets are. From what you say, we may need her Gift one day.”

“The Goddess doesn’t give us useless gifts—or Gifts, I suppose,” Alanna said heavily. “If trained, she could be a powerful asset.”

“All right,” Jon said. “I can have someone to you in a few days. You could use that time to recover.”

“What?”

Jon grinned. “I’ve known you long enough to recognize when you leave things out of stories.”

Alanna scowled darkly at the mirror. Jon didn’t have the good grace to flinch under her furious look.

“Rest up, Alanna,” Jon said. “Surely you can handle a few days of taking it easy?”

Alanna scowled more. “I’m fine,” she ground out. “Neal healed me.”

“You and I both know that you wore yourself out before he got to you,” Jon said, smug in his certainty. “You should rest up before you do it again.”

Alanna let the spell go, sagging back against her chair with an exhausted sigh. As much as she hated to admit it, Jon was right. She was wearing herself out, and she didn’t have the reserves of youth to keep her going. She could have forced herself on when she was still green, determined to prove herself, but not now.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow she would start to teach Ethelle to meditate. She didn’t have time to do more than that, but it would be a good foundation for anyone else to build on.

* * *

 

Alanna asked Ethelle to meditate with her, and had told Neal to join them. Neal had accepted the arrangement with comparatively little argument. Ethelle, on the other hand, seemed determined to make up for Neal’s unusual acquiescence single-handedly. She stood in the doorframe of the room that Alanna had claimed as her classroom, not allowing so much as a toe to cross the threshold. Alanna and Neal were seated, cross-legged, on the wooden floor, seated on fabric square mats to ward off the chill and splinters. Alanna had opened her eyes at Ethelle’s arrival; Neal kept his closed.

“You can’t be serious,” Ethelle said, hands on her hips and glaring down at the two of them. “I have things to do and you want me to sit on the floor and think about nothing?”

“Yes,” Alanna said. “Though you’re only half-right. I expect you to sit on the floor and not think of anything.”

Ethelle exhaled sharply, taut with exasperation.

“Lady Ethelle, you really aren’t going to win this one,” Neal said dryly, eyes still closed. “My lady knight has been more stubborn than a mule for longer than both our lives combined.”

“Focus on your meditation, Queenscove,” Alanna said sternly.

“I live and obey, Sir,” Neal replied, affecting an awkward bow from his seated position.

“I don’t think you know the meaning of those words,” Alanna muttered. “Whatever did I do to deserve you as my squire?”

“I believe you volunteered,” Neal replied lightly. “Most other knights would have — and did, I’m told — run a mile, rather than have me as their squire.”

“They were all taller than me,” Alanna said. “Longer legs. It meant they could outrun me.”

“Are you two always like this?” Ethelle broke in, and sighed. “Very well. I will join you, if only to stop wasting time that I don’t have.” She sat down on the mat set aside for her with little grace, scowling at Alanna.

“Now close your eyes.” Alanna waited for Ethelle to close her eyes. “Concentrate on your breathing. You’ll think of other things, but don’t dwell on them. Acknowledge that they’re there, and let them go. Let your Gift go, and don’t use it.” She waited for Ethelle’s scowl to fade, then closed her own eyes. She didn’t need to be able to see to sense Ethelle’s magic as a roiling, unstable cloud. Neal’s was far more sedate in comparison, close to his skin and as calm and unruffled as a still lake. Over time, as Ethelle’s mind stilled, her magic became less turbulent.

“All right, we’re done for the day,” she said, once Ethelle’s magic had stabilized. “We’ll be doing this every morning until the tutor arrives.”

Neal groaned. “Really?”

“We could do thread magic,” Alanna suggested. The last time she had tried to teach Neal thread magic, he had managed to attract every stray thread in the castle to his hand for an hour afterward. From his expression, he too remembered that too.

“No, meditation is fine,” he said quickly. “In fact, I love it! We should do it all the time.”

“Am I included in this?” Ethelle said archly. “I do have other responsibilities, you know.”

“Naturally,” Alanna replied. “You’re the one most in need of it. This will keep you safe until your tutor arrives.”

“You did almost drive everyone in the vicinity insane,” Neal added helpfully. “I’d listen to her; she _did_ take an arrow that was meant for you. And you can’t do any of your responsibilities if you’re dead.”

Ethelle shot him a look, her jaw tense and hands held tightly in her lap. “Yes, I know,” she said. “I am grateful for Sir Alanna’s actions.”

“Great,” Alanna said, clapping her hands together. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Same time and place.” She let Neal pull her to her feet and picked up her mat, folding it neatly and tucking it under one arm. “As for you,” she said to Neal, “we’re going to see how your patients are doing.”

* * *

 

On the fifth day — faster than Alanna had expected —Jonathan’s tutor arrived. She was a short, stocky woman with a mass of red curls and grey eyes hidden behind thick glasses, and she looked at Ethelle with the steady gaze of someone with little tolerance for nonsense. Alanna liked her immediately. She nodded her thanks to her, and headed to the stables, where Neal had already loaded their saddlebags, and the stable boy had readied their mounts for riding.

“Neal,” she asked as they rode away, “you started as a page late. How difficult was that for you?”

“So you can guess how difficult it’ll be for Lady Ethelle coming to the university in her twenties rather than in her teens?” Neal asked. He hummed in thought. “It was hard,” he said reflectively, to Alanna’s surprise. She had half-expected him to deflect the question with a joke or flippant remark. “But not in the way you’re thinking. I was one of the youngest attending the university, and then I was, by far, the oldest page in my year. It was hard for everyone to adjust.”

She looked over at him. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully; unsurprising, really. Neal’s decision to drop out of his university studies to become a knight was a decision near to his heart, and he tended to guard his heart zealously with his quick wits and razor tongue.

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about her,” he said, the corner of his mouth tilting into a wry smile. “The university is full of people just like her, and there’ll be lots of others around her age there. She’ll fit in fine, once she passes the exams.”

“Are you trying to reassure me?” Alanna asked, amused.

“Definitely not,” Neal said quickly. “I would never dream of reassuring such an august knight as yourself about anything, let alone the reason why we stayed in one place for almost a week. Which, I might point out, is the first time we’ve stayed anywhere that long in _months_.”

“Well, you’ll like where we’re heading next,” Alanna said, steering her horse on. “We’re going to Pirate’s Swoop. It’s been far too long since I’ve gone home.”

It had been far too long since Alanna had gone home. It had also been far too long since Alanna had a moment to herself to think things through, and she had a great deal to think about from what she had seen and heard over the last week. She had known that the punishment for the conspirators would carry across generations. It was a terrible burden to bear, but one that Jon had thought at the time necessary. Now, confronted with the injustice that it perpetuated, it sat poorly against Alanna’s honor. She had to settle the debt and make it right, or else they would end up with generations of Tirragens believing that they were wronged. And they would be justified.

“Do you have baths there?” Neal asked, interrupting her thoughts. She thought it was deliberate by the angle of his head and the knowing hook to his smile.

“Yes, Neal, we have baths there, as you well know,” Alanna said patiently. “You will even be able to use them as many times as you want.”

“Then lead on, my lady knight.” He gestured dramatically with his hand. She did.


End file.
